Masanobu Tsuji

Masanobu Tsuji (11 October 1901-1961) was a colonel of the Imperial Japanese Army who served as an important tactical planner for the Japanese during World War II. He was also a fierce militarist, and he was responsible for provoking a border war with the Soviet Union in 1939 and for pushing for war with the United States in 1941.

Biography
Masanobu Tsuji was born on 11 October 1901 in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, and he received his secondary education at a military academy. He joined the Imperial Japanese Army's Toseiha faction and became a friend of the future Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and War Minister Seishiro Itagaki.

From 1937 to 1939, he served as a Kwantung Army staff officer, and his insubordination and aggressive attitude led to the border war with the Soviet Union, inciting the USSR to attack the Japanese at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939. After the defeat, his friends had him transferred to Taiwan, and he was later sent back to Japan, where he advocated war against the United States and United Kingdom.

In late 1941, he plotted the assassination of Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe in the case of successful peace talks with the USA. He organized the Sook Ching killings of Malayan Chinese while serving under Tomoyuki Yamashita as a staff officer, and he was later transferred to the Philippines, where he betrayed the gentle general Masaharu Homma's trust and liberal attitude towards the Filipinos by having captured Filipino officials and American prisoners of war executed. In New Guinea, as he did elsewhere, he ordered bold attacks regardless of the possible losses to be suffered, and he allegedly ate the liver of a dead Allied pilot in Burma.

After the war, he was imprisoned by Kuomintang intelligence in China before fleeing to Indochina, where he disappeared. He may have become an adviser to the North Vietnamese government, or he might have been killed in the Laotian Civil War; he was declared dead in absentia on 20 July 1968.